feb17_images_digital

IS

DECORATOR PROFILE

We take a piece of cotton and put a piece of art on it. How cool is that?

and he became a mentor to me. He was innovative and he was different.” Together with John, Graham began experimenting with different inks to discover what was possible. “There was massive innovation in those days. We were experimenting with plastisol discharges, discharge and plasti- sol high opacity, soft hand inks–we played with them all during the 80s and 90s.” It wasn’t just inks that Graham spent time investigating, he did the same with screen printing machinery. During Things’ heyday he had an engineer on his team and together they built and modified the machinery the company used to create its award-winning prints. “It was bloody hard work – we’d work 12-14 hours a day– but we enjoyed it.” He was also work- ing alongside Adrian Root at this time: “Adrian was quiet, he had incredibly high standards and he was a visionary – in my opinion one of the most influential men ever to grace this industry, but never one to want recognition. Chalk and cheese, we made a great team.” The highs and lows By 1992, when the first issue of Images came out with Graham on the cover, he was overseeing an 80,000 square foot factory in east London and 180 staff. “I came into an enormous factory, ab- solutely empty. I took it from 30 staff to 180 staff at its height in 1998, and from £3 million turnover a year to £14 mil- lion with very healthy profits. That was at the absolute height, when the UK was printing T-shirts for everyone. We were the biggest independent and possibly the best company technically, quality wise and for innovation. And then the wheels fell off the industry in many ways. Not just for us: for everyone. We, as an industry, had prostituted our skills to the Turkish and the Chinese in the form of consultants, and we saw these foreign markets go from being cowboys to excellent printers with cheap labour and, in those days, few checks or accreditation requirements–and they were much cheaper than we were. “The whole industry levelled out. We had

competition coming through in the UK that were good companies, so they were nibbling away at our ankles; we lost all the Adidas work to Turkey; and the rock and roll industry become quite political and we lost certain accounts.” Graham decided to go to America where he set up a company in Colorado. He then came back to the UK and took on the managing director role at Local Boyz Group. It had an annual turnover of £33 million that sold Chinese-made fashion tees to various businesses, including a small, rapidly growing UK company called Sports Direct. Since returning to the UK he has con- tinued to print T-shirts, ending up back at Things which he now owns and has re- named Retro Activewear. He’s still based in the east end of London and has as many ideas and plans now as he did when he was starting out. He was one of the first to buy a DTG digital printer–a machine that was, he admits, “rubbish”. Despite this shaky start, in 1996, in an earlier Images interview, Graham boldly predicted that in five years there would be a digital revolution. It’s taken nearer 20 years, he says, but we’re seeing it now. “I predicted that there would be digital ma- chines based on the hexachrome system with a discharge first colour down. The early digital machines were four-colour process but now we’re seeing hexa- chrome-type systems with discharge. “They haven’t cracked it yet, though. In my opinion, the manufacturers don’t get enough printers involved–they use scientists instead, and don’t bring in the practical expertise enough.” Retro Activewear currently has a Kornit Breeze and Graham expects to expand the digital side of the business massively when his new venture–www.varsitypunk. com–goes live at the end of February. “My biggest mistake was not carrying on with my digital project eight years ago. We got sidetracked, but we’re going to catch up again now with Varsity Punk. Looking at the wider industry, it’s breathtaking what’s happening out there in fulfilment

Graham [white shirt] on the first Images cov er

“A t 19 I had to get out of London and the oil rigs seemed as a good a place as any to hide,” begins Graham Ridley, owner of Retro Activewear. It’s an unexpected start to an interview about a life in screen printing! His time on the rigs in the late ‘70s saw him hand paint a badge on a bag for a rig and then everybody wanted one. One book from Reeves art shop in Kensington later and he was screen printing bags and T-shirts for all the rigs in the company. After the Alexander Kielland rig sunk nearby and a minor helicopter engine fail, Graham, with massive understatement, says he thought it might be time for a new vocation away from the sea. He started working for himself in the 1980s printing football club merchandise: the licensing industry was in its infancy at that time and football merch was not yet readily availa- ble. In 1985, Things Fashions, aka Things, bought out his business and he took on the role of Things’ production director. He says he “drifted into T-shirts” but it’s hard to picture Graham drifting into anything. By his own admission, he is an ambitious person and once he decided on T-shirts, he threw himself into it. “I have an enquiring mind – I like to know how things work,” he says. “I learnt it all from books initially and then trial and error and questions.” John Mason of JT Keeps, who is now the managing director of Rutland Inks, was a formative influence and played a central role in furthering Graham’s screen printing education. “Nobody wanted to tell you anything in those days. Then I met John

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